Amazing Africa

Jambo! (hello in Swahili). I was asked to teach the Amazing Africa class for homeschoolers at the museum. This is one of those tasks that fall under the "5% of time will be spent on assignments as requested by supervisor" portion of my job description. I replaced someone who was on leave of absence. While it certainly took up more than 5% of my time (what do I know about Africa?!) I was glad to do it and I am sure I learned way more than my 4 students did. The kids were all charming and interested and with only four of them in class, we could really focus on some fun activities. We covered geography, ecology/conservation, ancient kingdoms and daily life as it relates to children. The latter was probably the most interesting to all of us. After reading some books together, they did some comparisons between their lives and those of children all over Africa. At the end of it, despite all the unique cultural differences, their list of similarities was much greater than their differences. I found that a bit surprising for these kids but also encouraging. There are many good Africa books for children - some of my favorites:
Children Just Like Me, a DK Eyewitness book (covers countries worldwide)
Kofi and His Magic, Maya Angelou
Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, Verna Aardema
Safari, Robert Bateman
Masai and I, Virginia Kroll
For you are a Kenyan Child, Ezra Jack Keats